


it's alright, it's ok

by AtlantisRises



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Gen, Juno and Peter...have not worked out their issues, M/M, Nureyev says Juno’s name just like...a ridiculous number of time, Post-Season/Series 02, also there's mafia, and a kidnapped kid, so that's fun
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-30
Updated: 2019-05-30
Packaged: 2020-03-29 18:24:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19025416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AtlantisRises/pseuds/AtlantisRises
Summary: Outside the door, heavy footsteps thunk thunk thunk thunk down the hall. Someone shouts, and Rose curls her lips up and presses further back against the wall. Juno turns, just enough to look out from under the desk, and then turns back.“You hiding from those guys too?”*************OR: Juno and Peter (accidentally) foil a mafia kidnapping





	it's alright, it's ok

**Author's Note:**

> Contains mild violence, kidnapping, and implied parental abuse.

Rose has just managed to worm her way beneath the desk when the noise starts.  The alarms come first, echoing big and loud in the tiny office they’ve locked her in. Next is shouting, and heavy footsteps that rattle the ceiling above her. Rose squirms and squirms until her back is to the wall, and curls in around herself, trying to ignore the sharp spark of pain where the zip ties dig into her ankle. She’s gnawing again at the ties around her wrists—not that it’s done any good so far, but she can’t think of anything else—when the doorknob begins to click and rattle.

Rose holds very still.

The door opens slowly. From under the desk all she can see is a splash of light, and then—creeping slowly, quietly—two pairs of feet.

The first is delicate, silent, in flat, ribbon-tied shoes like the ones Rose used to wear to dance class. Then come worn out boots and the swish of a long coat, and the door closes. Rose breathes slow, slow, slow, like Mama taught her.

Someone is panting.

“You think they—” says a voice, hoarse and low and breathless.

“Hush, detective,” says a second.

The first voice makes a low, hissy sound and the booted feet shift closer. Rose curls in tight, focuses on the in-out of her breathing and the high-low-high of the alarm and breathes and breathes and then—

 _Thunk!_ goes something on the desk above her, and Rose shrieks.

Both pairs of feet freeze. Rose puts both hands on her mouth and presses hard to hold in any other noise. Her ankle hurts and her shoulders are shaking and her eyes are wet and she wants _Mama, Mama, Mama, please._

The desk shifts. The boots line up just in front of her and—

“Juno,” says the second voice, tight.

\--and there’s a face. Rose screams against her hands, presses them close and stares into a single, wide eye.

The face is dark, like Mama, and scruffy and scarred and half-hidden by the edge of the desk. “Shit,” the face says. It disappears for a moment, as Rose’s heart pounds madly in her throat, and then reappears attached to a set of knees, and a dusty collar, and an arm.

Rose screams again, and slaps as hard as she can at the hand reaching under the desk.

“ _Juno,_ ” hisses the other voice again, and the scruffy person— _Juno—_ jolts up against the bottom of the desk and curses again.

“Shut _up_ ,” he says, head tilted towards the voice, and then he looks at Rose again and he must be in pain, because his eyebrows are all creased up in the middle and his voice goes very low. “Are you alright?” he says.

Rose brings her knees up to her chest and glares.

The Juno person lets out a big deep breath. “Yeah, ok. Dumb question.”

Outside the door, heavy footsteps _thunk thunk thunk thunk_ down the hall. Someone shouts, and Rose curls her lips up and presses further back against the wall. The Juno person turns, just enough to look out from under the desk, and then turns back.

“You hiding from those guys too?”

Rose glares even harder. _Don’t talk to strangers_ , Mama said. _Don’t talk to strangers and don’t talk to Dad’s friends and don’t go out alone and don’t…_

That’s a lot of rules broken already, and look where it’s gotten her.

Juno is still watching her with that scrunched up expression on his face. He wiggles a bit, turns until he can get his other arm under the desk too, and reaches into his sleeve to pull out…well. Rose knows what a plasma knife looks like.

She shoves her knuckles in her mouth to stop another scream.

“Nononono!” says Juno, fast and breathless. He drops the knife in front of him and puts his hands up, palms towards her. “Here, you just…I’m gonna go back here, ok? You know how to use this?”

Rose stays very still until he starts to back out from under the desk, and then she nods. As soon as she’s alone she wiggles forward and snatches up the knife and thumbs the safety catch. It’s difficult to maneuver with her hands bound, but she braces the handle against her chest and pulls her hands as far apart as she can, until there’s space to slide the blade across the zip ties without nicking her wrist. She does her ankles fast and clenches her jaw tight around a whimper as blood rushes needle-sharp into her bad foot.

The soft, quiet feet haven’t moved from their position by the door, but the Juno person is still on his knees, a ways back from the desk. His hands are still open, resting in plain view on his thighs. Not holding any weapons, but that _doesn’t mean he isn’t armed_ , she thinks, and cranes her neck to one side and then the other until she sees the bump at his hip, just under his jacket. _Blaster_ says Mama’s voice in her head, and she nods and keeps the knife tight in her right hand as she inches her way out.

Juno shuffles back on his knees as she emerges, and she gets a better look at him: an adult, but younger than Mama or Dad, and small, and scarred, with a patch over his left eye like a pirate in one of the old earth fairy tales Mama told her when she was little. She keeps his hands in sight and the knife in front of her as she looks up at the other person.

 _Tall_ , is her first impression, and then _sharp_. The Juno person has something warm and sad in the lines of his face but this man is blank and pale and cold. She makes herself look away from his eyes and the flat line of his mouth and checks like Mama taught her—no blaster, and no other weapons that she can see, but it’s hard to be sure in the soft dark lines of his clothing.

She looks up again and his head is tilted, curious. “Hello,” he says. His voice is softer than the rest of him.

Rose glares at him too, and turns so that she can put her back to the wall without tripping over the desk. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Juno move, and jerks to point the knife at him.

“Easy,” he says, hands up again as he slowly rises to his feet. “We’re not here to hurt you.”

“Who are you?”

The tall man looks to him, eyebrows raised. Juno’s lip curls. “We’re…not friends of the guy who runs this place. The opposite, actually.”

“You’re here to hurt my Dad.”

Juno’s eyes go big at that, and he looks over his shoulder at the tall, man, and then back at her, mouth opening and closing and opening again.

“It’s ok,” she says, and lifts one hand so they can see the red marks the ties left on her wrist. “My Dad did this. He’s a shithead.”

Juno’s jaw snaps shut. His face does something funny; all of him seems to close up. The tall man looks at him, and then looks at her, and then takes a step towards her. She doesn’t lower the knife.

The tall man meets her eyes and says very calmly “we’re here to rob him.” Juno makes a noise low in his throat.

She puts both hands back on the knife and shifts until all her weight is on her good foot.  The tall man tracks the motion.

“You’re injured.”

 _Don’t let them see you hurt_ said Mama. Rose says nothing.

Something beeps.

It’s enough to startle Juno out of whatever trance he’s in. He taps his right ear and turns away from her. “Rita,” he says.

Whoever’s on the other side of the comms talks for a long time, and Juno’s shoulders tense and crawl up, up, up to his ears. “Hang on,” he says, and then, “Rita, dammit, just—” and then “we _can’t,”_ loud enough for both Rose and the tall man to stare at him.

“Tell Jet…goddammit, listen to me. There’s a hostage, Rita, a kid. I need…” and then he trails off, turns to look at the tall man with his eyebrows all bunched up in the middle again and then abruptly turns away.  “I need an exit. Nu-Nora will finish this leg on his own.”

The tall man’s eyes close. He breathes out, slowly, through his nose; it’s the most emotion Rose’s seen on his face yet. “Juno,” he says.

Something about the tone makes homesickness close around Rose’s chest so sudden and so tight she almost drops the knife.

Juno says a few more things into the comms—“right,” and “no, I’ve still got my—” and “we already deactivated it, she’s clear”—before he sighs, runs one hand back through his short, gold-shot locs, and nods. “Thanks, Rita. Just give us a minute.”

The tall man—Nora?—opens his mouth and then shuts it, as Juno steps past him and drops to one knee in front of Rose.  

“Ok kid,” he says. “My name is Juno; this is Nora Prince. We came here to rob your dad blind but we’re gonna get you out of here first. That alright?”

Rose frowns. She looks at Nora, standing with one foot pointed towards the door and his eyes glued to Juno. He looked so sharp before. Now, he catches her looking and smiles just a little, and nods.

Rose lowers the knife.

A little bit of the tension in Juno’s shoulders eases. “Good, great kid, thanks for that. What’s your name?”

Mama would tell her not to but she can’t see how it matters at this point, so she tells him, “Rose.”

Nora gives a soft, choked laugh. Juno puts his hands in his hair and sighs.

_______

Whoever Rita is, she’s good at her job. After Nora slips out and disappears down the hall, she leads Rose and Juno in the other direction, through quiet back corridors that Rose has never seen before. Juno whispers questions into his comms and jerks his head _this way_ or _that way_ as Rose does her best to keep pace and ignore the throbbing in her foot. As she does, she sees cameras turn away and digital locks pop open seemingly on their own and can’t help a buzz of vindictive pleasure at the idea that a hacker _this good_ has come after her Dad. _Mama would be proud._

The buzz dies when she hears heavy footsteps up ahead. Juno grabs her shoulder and pulls her against a wall, his hand going to his blaster. She runs her thumb over the catch of the plasma knife and tries to catch her breath.

“ _Rita,”_ Juno hisses, and the response is so loud that Rose, pressed close against Juno’s side, can almost make out the words. Rita sounds panicked. Rose’s heartbeat picks up.

Juno steps slowly and quietly out in front of her and jerks his chin back the way they came. Rose backs up towards the last doorway before a low _whir_ and _hiss_ and _click_ stop her dead in her tracks _._

The door slides closed.  Rose looks at Juno, eyes wide as the _thunk thunk thunk_ of booted footsteps gets closer. He snarls and pulls his blaster.

“Dammit! Rita, I’m shut out! Can you get back into the sys—Rita! What’re you—”

And then, gunfire.

Juno dives for her. One arm crowds her back between his body and the door and the other lifts to shoot, once, twice, three times as the guards descend on them and open fire. Juno’s body jolts suddenly, horribly, and Rose smells burned flesh even as he keeps pushing her back, back, back, and she wants to scream.

Hands grab at her and she stabs blindly, feels the give of flesh and reaches for Juno— _don’t hurt him don’t hurt him he’s good please don’t—_ and gets a handful of his coat. He staggers to his feet and snarls at the closest guard but his shot goes wide and there are too many of them, now, all with their blasters raised and Rose doesn’t want to go back, she wants her Mama, _Mama please_ , but Juno’s going to die and she doesn’t want that either and she screams for them to stop, _stop, leave him alone!_

And then a voice says, “look away, dear.”

Rose doesn’t see what happens next; Juno presses her face into his side and she smells blood and burnt cotton there, and feels him shudder. Three more shots ring out, and then there’s a series of soft, wet thuds, a scream, and the sound of a knife in flesh. Rose grips her own knife tight in the silence that follows.

Juno’s side is heaving as he loosens his grip and lets her slip out from behind him. There are four bodies in the corridor—she bites her cheek and makes herself look at them, take in the familiar suits and the blood at their throats—and standing over them, eyes wild and hair falling into his face, is Nora Prince. He has a knife in each hand; Rose nods, minutely and thinks _not unarmed after all_ in a distant, back corner of her brain.

She notes, just as distantly, that she’s crying.

Juno staggers into the wall. “Oh hey. You came back.”

Nora makes an injured sort of noise and darts forward to take Juno’s weight on his shoulder and lower him carefully to the floor. “ _Juno_ ,” he says, this time like he’s choking on it.  

With his coat peeled back it’s clear that Juno’s been hit. There’s blood spreading down the side of his shirt like ink on water. Nora’s hands flutter over him, pulling a white cloth from his pocket and pressing it into the wound while Rose’s face goes hot and her stomach goes cold and her breath hitches.

“I’m sorry. Gods, oh gods, I’m so sorry.”

Juno, who had been staring at Nora, turns to her.

“It’s ok,” he say. He shifts towards her, winces, and tries to stand.

“Sit _down,_ Juno.”

“Dammit, I’m…I’m fine. Rose. I’m fine. Look.”

He struggles to his feet and yanks up the side of his shirt so she can see a long line of blood carved into his side. Nora freezes, and then lifts his hands away, slowly, to let her look as she steps closer.

“Just a graze,” says Juno gently. “Believe me when I say I’ve had worse.”

“It’s so much _blood_.”

“It will need stitches,” says Nora. His eyes are shut again, his mouth pressed into a thin line. “But he’s right. We have a medic in our crew, and she’ll patch him up. He’ll be…fine.”

His voice goes flat on the last word. Rose looks at him, and at Juno, but whatever’s there in the silence between them is bigger than this bloody corridor, and she can’t begin to see the shape of it.

 

_______

They make it out a back door and into a warm, dark night, and there’s a car waiting for them. The car is green. The man in the driver’s seat is huge. He looks the three of them over, reaches into the glove box and pulls out a first aid kit.  Juno groans and flops down-- gingerly—into the passenger’s seat.

“Nice to see you too, big guy.”

Nora opens the back door and gestures her inside.

Mama always said not to get into cars with strangers, but then again…

Rose looks at the blood he still hasn’t wiped off of his hands, and the curious tilt to his head. She gets in the car. He slides in next to her.

“Jet, darling,” he says in a voice that’s nothing like his voice in the hallway. “We’ve got a slight detour to make.”

The big man looks at them in the rearview mirror and nods. “Where to?” he says.

Nora looks at her expectantly.

“Home,” she says, and gives them the address, and wonders what her Mama will say when she pulls up with a gang of bloody thieves. 

She looks to her right, and finds Nora watching her.  He puts one finger to his lips, and then reaches into his pocket and pulls something out.

It’s a plasma cutter, like the one that Juno gave her but sleek and slim and light. Rose cocks her head, and he leans forward in his seat and slips it, deftly, into the side of her boot. She nods. He nods.

They bring her home.

 

_______

By the time news of the arrest breaks, Rose and her Mama are two moons away.  Mama watches the screen with her hand to her mouth, as the lady on the stream describes the _shocking revelations_ brought to light about mafia ties within the Ionian government. The camera pans to show four men in suits and handcuffs being led from the capital building.

The second man turns, and the camera catches her father’s face, and Mama wraps her arms tight around Rose’s shoulders.

“They really got him,” says Rose.

“Good riddance,” says Mama.

“New evidence shows…” says the newscaster. Rose lets her voice fade to a background drone. She reaches down to press her hand over the warm, slight weight in her sock, and tucks herself closer into her Mama’s side, and breathes.

_______

 

Half a star system away, Juno Steel is sewing something into the sleeve of his coat, and Peter Nureyev is watching him.

 _You came back,_ Nureyev hears, over and over again. He closes his eyes, and presses his lips together, and breathes deep.

He makes a decision.

“Juno,” he says.

**Author's Note:**

> I marked this as completed but if people like it I'm considering extending it into a series about the Crime Fam as seen through the eyes of just...complete randos.
> 
> Lemme know what you think in the comments.
> 
> Edit: title from the Mother Mother song of the same name, which is the Juno-est song ever


End file.
